The Liminal War

by Ayize Jama-everett

  “You’re not appeasing them. Your girl can’t fight them all. We’ve got to negotiate. Come on, Mico! What do they want?”

  “They don’t want to be forgotten,” Tamara whispers in our minds. She’s levitating in a lotus position in the middle of the Mansai, working her best to commune with the spirits. Her words mean nothing to me, but the crooner gets something out of it. He runs to the highest mast and starts shimmying to its top. Tamara gives him a telekinetic boost as I boost his and my ATP levels and fat-burning muscle and climb up behind him.

  He howls. Inarticulate, devoid of all music. It’s a primal scream heard above wave, storm, and thunder. They all silence for him. That’s when he speaks.

  “How can I forget you? You are written on our skin. You want me to carry you? Fine. You will be my strength.” He turns to me in the crow’s nest. “The cross sections of the slave ships. Have you seen them?” I’ve never heard him out of breath, hoarse before.

  Tam shoves the familiar vision in my head. I nod.

  “I need that image on my arm.” He pushes me. “Permanent. Not just pigment, you understand? I need it to be part of me.”

  I start raising skin, pigment, scar tissue and bacteria to craft a relief of pain and suffering on the crooner’s arm. Despite the swaying of the time-ocean and our mutual panic, he doesn’t move. The time pressure is a distraction. The threat of the next spirit wave wrestles with my focus. But I breathe deep and stay attentive, creating as beautiful a representation of objectification as I can manage. Each huddled shade has a space representing eyes and a mouth. Each body is proportional. Each chain linking hands to feet or neck is damn near photorealistic. I spend myself utterly on his tattoo, linking nerve endings with each millimeter of arm space. It takes Tam to keep me standing with a telekinetic push.

  “Done,” I tell him.

  “I hope so,” Mico answers me, then barks back to the sky. He lifts his right arm—my new work—unceremoniously to the sky. “Come! Come to your child and know you will never be forgotten.”

  They come by the thousands, tens of thousands. Half eaten, fully whole, children, men, old and young women. They come flying into his arm, each electrifying Mico, making him a bit stronger, each taking a little power from the storm and donating to Mico’s ready physical frame. Each is a little easier to take. He doesn’t scream out as they come but damned if he doesn’t want to. It’s just him and me in the crows’ nest. I hold him close, not daring to heal any part of him. This is the sacrifice. He can hear the fits and starts of the universe and dance but the suffering of the Africans almost breaks him. Almost. When Mico is saturated he pulls his arm back to his body, cradling it as though injured. There are still spirits in the wind, but significantly less.

  “The resistance is passable,” the captain says from below—and all around us. He doesn’t complain, but I help Mico down the crow’s nest anyway.

  “All right then?” my girl asks him.

  “I have the middle passage’s nameless souls on my arm. I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again.”

  ACT III

  1938 Mississippi

  Chapter Eleven

  An hour equates to a year on this ship, if Chabi is to be believed. That means we’ve got a day and a half until we get to New Orleans, which is the closest she’ll get to land. Of course, when I ask her why her mouth doesn’t move when she speaks all I get is a wry smile. Tamara wants me to thank the non-existent gods we’re alive and let it go. Mico’s been recovering below deck ever since his new mark.

  In the travel spirit version of night—a quickly creeping darkening of everything from the west, followed almost immediately by a warming glow rising from the east—I hear a rare joy: Tamara chatting it up with Chabi. Grinning in her voice. I used to think my daughter was a lesbian. She still may be. She’s attracted to powerful women. The only times she ever fought with Prentis was when the animal girl refused to acknowledge her own power. Tam has no tolerance for weak women. This Chabi doesn’t know how to spell “weak.” I stare off the starboard deck to give them a modicum of privacy as they chat and spar.

  “Broke all the bones of one of them,” the captain says, doing her strange boat kata.

  “I threw one of them into the ocean,” Tam counters, levitating above the deck in a lotus position.

  “Which one?”

  “Poppy, they call her. She was knocking around in my head like she had the right to be there.”

  “Little rat-tooth wench? More skin and bones than meat?” The ship goes still and rigid as she stops moving.

  “That’s the one.”

  “Next time you see that one rip her limbs the fuck off and burn her eye sockets out for me, would you?”

  “Easy enough favor. What she mean to you, then?”

  “Sooner all of them go back to whatever shadowy abyss of uncreation they got shit out of, the better we’ll all be.” The ship starts moving again, slowly, calmly. “That one, though, she took an innocent I knew. A friend. I don’t have a lot of those.”

  “Sorry for your loss, yeah? But you’ve got two new friends, if that helps at all.”

  “Careful with that word. Circles you travelling in now, it could get you killed.”

  “Think I don’t know that? Me and the old man are going through time, scrapping with nightmare beasties and angry African ghosts off the strength of loyalty to a friend. I know the value of friendship and what it costs. You pulled my . . . Taggert out of harm’s way. Even saved him from himself with bomb-ass kicks to the head, yeah? Debts owed, the way I see it.”

  “Mico introduce you to an Alter he keeps on a leash? Goes by Narayana?”

  “Yeah.” The hesitation in her voice is born from a recognition. I have to look over the deck to see it. Chabi’s c-steps, her imaginary steps, her entire system of occupying space, it’s the same as Narayana’s.

  “Next time you see him, you let him know Chabi’s coming for his ass.”

  “Understood.”

  “Cool. Now let me show you some moves.”

  They train until Tamara almost passes out. They could almost be sisters. Chabi is older, has a bit more swagger, and is obviously more deadly. But I stop the associations there. Something is wrong in Chabi. Precious few are immune to my liminal sight. And those that are usually walk too close to death for the healer spirit in me to be comfortable around. But Tam was right. This Chabi is closer to friend than enemy and no friend of the Alters. I feel a Liminality about her.

  In the quickened morning, Tamara sleeps as Mico rises. In the inbetween time, Chabi and I keep our distance. She gets a look of disdain every time my hands go near the entropy knives. I breathe slightly easier when I see the American coast.

  Real ships appear ghostlike as we pass them in a perpetual mist of spirit. As Mico comes to my side of the Mansai to survey the southern leg of our journey, I examine my handiwork on his inner arm.

  “It’s . . . animated,” I tell him.

  “Believe me, I know. We’ve been working a peace treaty that would put the Hague to shame.” He strokes the living tattoo reverently. “Lots of different tribes and languages forced together in this small place.”

  “Luckily you’re used to having millions chattering in your dome.” He nods, still stroking his arm. I point to Chabi. “What is she?”

  “She’s a mystery.”

  “No shit. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “To me as much as you. We were desperate. You were underwater for a long time. Longer than you realize, I think. Before we left, Narayana said that if I were to need help and I was near water to call out her name. Chabi. He didn’t tell me what would happen or who she was.”

  “You don’t know her?”

  “Look, I’m dealing with a lot here right now. My recall isn’t perfect. She looks . . . familiar, but I can’t place from where. Her name is like a fading whisper . . .”

  “Shut it, singer. How do you know she’s an ally for real and not an Alter trick?”

  “I called out
in the spirit of friendship.”

  “Sounds pretty desperate.”

  “We’re in the foxholes, Taggert. Might be time to choose your God.”

  By the time we reach Georgia, Tamara is up and mimicking Chabi’s katas to near perfection. By Florida she adds her own telekinetic flair to them. It almost feels like a party when Chabi brings up an ancient boombox from below deck and starts rocking the old-school drum and bass. Mico can’t help but add his own mouth and body percussion. His voice has more resonance now, supported by the spirits. Tamara thinks of inviting me to the dance party-training session, but I’m still not trusted by the captain. I can’t read her body, so I don’t trust her either. But I do respect her martial skills, the moves she’s sharing with Tam. Chabi knows bodies from the outside in, while I feel them from the inside out. It’s natural we don’t get along, I guess.

  Heading west and hugging the coast, we all feel the slipping of time easing.

  Distant ships are beginning to hail us. Real currents and tides are affecting the Mansai, and Chabi’s back at the rudder wheel.

  “Sure you don’t want to come with us?” Tamara asks Chabi.

  “Personally, I’d love to. But it’s not in the cards.” There’s genuine sadness in her voice as we angle into the booming port of New Orleans. The huge steamers and docked ferry boats barely seem to notice us.

  “My debt to you . . . ,” Mico starts, losing his thick coat against the real-world early evening mugginess of the Port.

  “. . . will be repaid someday,” the captain says, eyelocking him hard before he walks the gangway to dry land. She nods hard to Tam, who does the same. I try to avoid conversation, but she’s not having it.

  “You know what I am,” she tells me, quiet enough to keep from Tamara.

  “Dead,” I confirm. “You and this boat are bound together. One. It’s why you can’t get off.”

  “Mico’s way too trusting,” she says, nodding at my guess. “Your daughter is too green. Don’t let them end up like me. You see an Alter, you destroy an Alter right away. No talk, no negotiations.”

  “That’s the plan. As soon as we get Prentis back.”

  “And if it’s either or? ’Cause I might have been offered the same deal as your Prentis. But I got lucky and chose death.”

  “You know the value of family.”

  “And that’s how they keep fucking us over.”

  Tamara understands the full implications of Chabi waving good-bye to us from deck as the Mansai slips back into the spirit fog. She does her best not to cry, but her moist face reflects the moonlight perfectly just for a second as we turn to face our first gulps of 1938 air.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I thought slavery was over by now,” Tamara breathes out slowly from the back seat of our pilfered 1937 powder-blue Dusenberg. She was fine to steal it, along with suitable clothes, but she’ll be damned if she was willing to figure out the clutch, let alone the choke. Mico was smart enough to give her the backseat so she could catch some rest, but ever since we hit the Mississippi line she’s been complaining about the shocks and every other damn thing she can think of. The spit-boil heat and dust of these Depression-era roads is not helping.

  “They’re not slaves,” Mico says, catching her reference: a dispossessed black family of eight with all manner of cloth bundles for luggage. They make their way up a shale dirt road, and we all feel guilty zipping by them. All their clothes are repurposed flour sacks and gingham, and they all have holes in them. “The Depression is in full swing here, and it was always worse for black people . . .”

  “They freed us but didn’t really have an idea about how to pay for what they took from us,” I interrupt.

  “What ‘us’?” she asks.

  “My people are from this land. That means half of your people are from here. Us.”

  “All right Mister Black Nationalistic,” Tam mocks after Mico directs me down a red clay dirt road. “Still, someone might want to go back there and tell those suffering bastards they’re free. I mean, it’s miserable with heat in here and I can only imagine what they’re feeling out in the sun.”

  “That’s not the job.” I sigh. The break in the afternoon heat gives the promise of evening air soon. This Flintstones engine and I could both deal with a temperature drop.

  “Right. We’re following the cosmic Barry White’s cosmic dream to Robert Johnson in order for what now?” Tam asks, leaning forward from her seat.

  “What’d I say the first twenty-five times you asked?”

  “You’d tell me when we got there.” I’m happy to let my silence be the end of it, but Mico’s been getting anxious since we left the Mansai half a day ago.

  “Is this some grand strategy you two have trained in?” He sighs out hard. “No plans, just run headlong into danger?”

  “You ever been punched in the face?”

  “Let me! Let me!” Tamara bounces.

  “I boxed as a kid.” Mico ignores her.

  “Good. Then maybe you’ve heard the expression ‘Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the face.’”

  “Can’t say I have.”

  “Wanna feel it?”

  “Quiet, Tam. Listen, man, you want plans and strategies? Go find a soldier or a general or a hacker. I’ve got to diagnose, see what we’re dealing with, before I can even imagine talking plans.”

  “The real question is you, ennit?” Tam says with a light smack to the back of his head. “You know how the old man and I get down. When it’s time to turn on the whip-ass I’m on hot, and Tag is cold as cancer. Where are you?”

  “You’re asking if I’m willing to fight?”

  “More like can ya,’ cause for real fam, I’m trying to call up a time I’ve seen you throw a punch, and I’m coming up with nothing.”

  “Not all fights require fists.”

  “Yeah, well this one probably will.” She keeps pushing. “That Chabi girl, yeah? She was dropping serious knowledge about the Alters. Where and how to hit them, how to smash their bones and make ’em so they don’t heal back. And where was you?”

  “Mollifying the rageful spirits that threatened to tear the ship apart.” He turns to face her. Angry.

  “Girl’s got a point,” I say, turning back on to a state road.

  “You’re questioning my ability as well?”

  “Not your will and drive, but yeah, your ability. Every conflict we’ve been in, you’ve called on allies. Outnumbered or outpowered your opponent. Well, your only allies in this time are sitting in the car right next to you. And we’d be idiots not to test your jaw. The Alters send Nordeen to kidnap our girl and collect musical nightmares specifically to launch at you. Now I’ve been punched in the face my whole life. It’s okay. I heal. Sometimes I think Tam likes to get knocked down just so she can get back up. You prepared to stand up on your own? No god, no kin, no clan to help? Plus the weight of the countless souls on your arm?”

  “I don’t know if I’ll . . . win,” he says just before I turn the car and we hit newly paved road. “But I promise the both of you and Prentis I won’t stop fighting until the Alters are done . . . or I am.” I risk eyes off the road to survey Mico in the fading amber light of the sun. I’m expecting a wary but resolute face. But he’s calm, placid. Almost peaceful. I believe him.

  Ten miles outside of Edgerton, Mississippi, we stop at the first gas station I’ve seen in hours. It rests to the side of a stately, small three-story livery draped in decaying clinging vines and yellow moss. A groggy, skinny white-boy attendant who will need braces by this time next year saunters toward the car.

  “Make us white,” I tell Tamara.

  “You make us white. It’s fucking degrading, ennit?”

  “So is lynching. No way three niggers in 1938 can afford this ride. Now do it!”

  “Racist,” she says quickly, then gives the gas jerk a vision of us as eccentric New Orleans proto-hippies.

  “Boy, where can I find some of that negra Mississippi Delta blues
music I keep hearing so much about?” I say, doing my best white-man-from-Louisiana accent.

  “Well, sir. Big Sally’s ain’t but four miles up the road. Saw Son House there last year ’fore he found religion. Boy go by Skip James had a house band up there not three weeks earlier.”

  “Expert in the field,” I say, handing him a stolen silver dollar.

  Big Sally’s is half kitchen, half bar, all moonshine speakeasy; a decaying small house next to an unused acre-and-a-half field. I can smell the unrefined distillate as we pull off the freeway by the wooden makeshift sign and into the cleared dirt parking lot just outside the two-story sheet-metal-roofed building. The four sets of five columns that line the porch are ornate in their bases, making me think this used to be more than a juke joint. There’s even a babbling creek behind it somewhere—I can hear but feel more, as it hydrates the dry-as-sin air. This was a rich plantation owners’ guest house at some point. But those days are over for this spot. We park next to cars far older and more rusted than ours, as well as the odd donkey and horse. Huge, drooping trees shade them all, forming a semicircle around the little cleared area.

  Low fashion as she is, Tam knew she had to rock a dress and so she’s slid into a blue-gray number with lots of give in the legs and a close hold on her near non-existent hips. Mico took the slacks with suspenders and the yellow button up she gave him with thanks. But she had to clown him with an almost zoot-suit jacket to go with it. I’d told him to take the shoulder pads off in the car. I’m fine with overalls and a red thermal top. The straw hat I scored on my own.